I can't find the other app, Curt. Sorry, I know it's in an options dialogue somewhere as a radio button to check but I'm stumped. All I can think of is that it might be an option in Neodownloader - which I no longer have installed (got it as a Giveawayoftheday but never used it so turfed it). Anyway, if I ever figure this out, I'll post back here. In the meantime, as noted above, Bulk Rename Utility (and probably any other renamer, will allow you to do this with the greatest of ease!

ps.Ryan over at Cybernetnews as been absolutely on fire lately, with tons of great posts coming out every days it seems -- I don't know how he's keeping up this pace but it's truly becoming a daily must-read.

This is right where it would prefer it to be! Very often people forget to rename their pics before uploading, so when we download them they have this annoying %20 in their names. It would be so good if some picture-downloader could auto-replace any "%20" in the saving process. You are most welcome to report back on the subject, Darwin!

Another question: can the same be done with "_" and "-_-" (music files)??

Hmm, it never occured to me that sequential operations were not supported - you have to go to the advanced mode, you cannot queue 2 simple presets. That's a very good point, and I guess it shows the author is so familiar with the advanced mode options he couldnt imagine some people would not be comfortable to have to switch to that mode to do simple things like -001. (I have fallen in traps like that when writing web applications - expecting people to use the advanced search etc.)

Curt: the advantage of the live preview is that you can figure it out and get it wrong 12 times in 20 seconds and still not have lost too much time.

I have to agree with a few others that Bulk Rename Utility is both the most powerful and easiest to use (for me). The UI is cluttered for good reason — it's all right there in front of you, and once you stare at it for a couple of minutes it makes sense (each function is labeled and numbered). No tabs, no backdoors, no subdialogs, just one level, and BAM! you're done. Makes it easy to save any renaming profile, and it's donationware, comes in Unicode, and 64-bit versions.

I considered and then rejected doing a meta-review of renamers a year ago because there were so many, several of them very, very good, and most of them useful. But their UI's varied so much among each other, I soon saw it became a matter of personal preference; often, simply what you were accustomed to using. Best thing is, the high-end file managers like XYplorer and DOpus include extensive renaming abilities if you don't use one of these utilities.

Here's another vote for Renamer (used on WinXP Pro). I haven't tried BRU but I have tried a few others whose names escape me. I really like the options Renamer offers. I take a lot of digital photos and videos of my kids, and have found Renamer to be very, very fast even when renaming directories of over 100 photos to have a basic name and a sequence number (i.e. "School Concert 001.jpg, ..." It finished the process so quickly I had to double check to see that it had really finished!

The interface can be a little daunting at first, but it's well worth learning.

I saved my preset and just have to make a minor modification each time I use it rather than figure it all out again. It strips all the filename characters but leaves the file extension in place, inserts the new name you have chosen and serializes it, as in my example above.

If anyone wants a copy of it I'll be glad to share it; you can easily import it and tweak it to suit your needs.